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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23319898">Meet Me At The Lavender Rhino</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister'>GretchenSinister</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>My Top 10 Blacksand Kinkmeme Fics [17]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rise of the Guardians (2012)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Worldbuilding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:47:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,692</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23319898</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Original Prompt: "So this has little if anything to do with sex, and is largely a worldbuilding prompt. I’m still fascinated by it, and only have what I’ve written below, so here we go. Sorry for the length.</p><p>The world of the Guardians seems to function like reality except where noted, as in the existence of all these legends, et cetera. Which is fine and a nice framing device and a handy shortcut for exposition. But I’d like to see something a little different: the spirits/Guardians actually have an impact on the “real” world.</p><p>For instance, North delivers all the toys on Christmas each year, and although these gifts appear to be scaled to the general economic fortune of the area, they aren’t supplied by parents. That means no holiday blowout sales. Possibly no Black Friday. Toy companies tend to play follow-the-leader with whatever the kids think is coolest come early January...[cut for length]"</p><p>I found the idea about Pitch and Sandy waging war over the lands of the Earth most interesting, and so I wrote about a woman who lives in a city in nightmare territory and what happens just before one of Pitch and Sandy’s so-called battles. I quite enjoyed writing this one.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Pitch Black/Sanderson Mansnoozie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>My Top 10 Blacksand Kinkmeme Fics [17]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654639</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Blacksand Short Fics</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Meet Me At The Lavender Rhino</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally posted on Tumblr on 7/31/2016.</p><p>Here's the rest of the prompt: "Adults might get each other small tokens, but Christmas is a largely religious/ritual (not the right word, but…) affair, a time for getting together with family and so on.</p><p>Or take, say, Valentine’s Day, which I’m assuming is represented by Cupid in one of his/her forms (winged baby, Eros, sexy lady, whatever). If you’re hit by one of Cupid’s arrows, you fall in love with whomever was hit by the corresponding arrow, and that love is permanent and unerring. It’s an infrequent but documented phenomenon, people finding the love of their lives (with good friends, strangers, and sometimes even lovers get Cupid’s push). No one doubts it, and saying you were “hit by Cupid’s arrow” is a pretty good way to get around familial objections, etc. (but it means you’re stuck with that person for the rest of your life). But that means that Valentine’s Day would be much less about hearts, flowers, and chocolate and much more about travelling, seeing lots of new people, and, if you’re very lonely, hoping that you’ll find that “soul mate”.</p><p>More canonically, there’s the Sandman and Pitch. One interpretation is that nightmares are a more or less unknown thing in modern times, that the Sandman keeps Pitch at bay and soothes fears and worries and tempers while people sleep; people are happier, more easygoing, less likely to suffer insomnia. (Recent studies have shown that sleeping during a certain period after a traumatic event can cement the memories in one’s mind and imbue them with more negative feeling than staying awake until the event has faded might have. Does Sandy negate this effect?) Another interpretation is that the Sandman and Pitch “wage war,” and therefore it’s not unusual to have entire geographic swathes feel “darker” than others, and sometimes entire cities will have a bout of horrific nightmares all at once. It’s treated as normal, like a weather pattern or something.</p><p>What about Jack? Does he split his year between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres? Do different continents have different winter spirits, and he’s just North America’s? Have weather patterns changed because of him, and if so, how? (Do El Nino/La Nina come up? (Sorry, I can’t do the little squiggly accent mark on my keyboard.))</p><p>The point is, I want to see more of this kind of world from a sociological standpoint. How has it affected culture? history? advertising? the medical profession? environmental issues? anything else? Go wild, anons, just make it make sense. You can keep, toss out, or play around with adults believing or not believing in the spirits/Guardians - maybe they only “believe,” as in “Yeah, sure Santa is real”? Maybe some do and some don’t? Maybe it’s only the conspiracy theorists?</p><p>TLDR: The Guardians and other assorted spirits have influenced the mundane world so much, and for so long, that it is rather unlike our own. I want to see those changes, and how they came about. Logical consequences are the most important; other than that, have fun."</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I’ve been asked, “Joan, why do you live in a nightmare city? Why does anyone live in a nightmare city?”<br/>
<br/>
I usually delete those messages. People who’ve never lived in nightmare territory never understand, and people who’re thinking of moving to one don’t put their questions that way.<br/>
<br/>
No one’s ever asked me those kind of questions to my face. Nightmare cities don’t really attract that kind of gormless tourist.<br/>
<br/>
It’s kind of funny, when you think about it. Nightmare cities aren’t any more dangerous than dream cities—that is, it all averages out. Yeah, they <em>feel </em>darker, but what does that mean, really? You’ve danced to plenty of songs in minor key, if you’re the kind of person who dances.<br/>
<br/>
Nightmare cities are just like dream cities—ha, okay, no, that’s not true, but it’s not true in ways different than those that the people in dream cities assume. Nightmare cities, like I said, feel darker. They attract more of the kind of people who wear black all the time. Spooky people, too, though that doesn’t mean all black. Not bad people, you have to understand this. Spooky people. Or people who’ve spooked other people. People who feature in the fears of people who would only consider living in dream cities.<br/>
<br/>
Now, now! Don’t jump to any conclusions. We know Sandy loves us. Most of us grew up in dream territory.<br/>
<br/>
Problem was, sometimes it was only Sandy that loved us.<br/>
<br/>
It’s not Sandy’s fault. It’s just that people who are really sure they’re right about everything tend to stay in dream territory.<br/>
<br/>
Anyway. Nightmare cities. The big, big difference is that there are very few kids in nightmare cities. Pitch’s nightmares hit them harder. It is what it is. For someone like me, and most of the people I hang out with, well, we get Pitch’s nightmares, too, and sure, they’re terrifying, but they’re also, how do I put this? Kind of cool. Creative, you know.<br/>
<br/>
And when you wake up from, for example, a spider dentist pulling all your teeth, it’s way easier to laugh off than the kind of nightmares you get in dream territory on the nights you don’t get Sandy’s dreams. Those nightmares, where your mother disowns you, or…<br/>
<br/>
Anyway, most of the people I know got plenty of nightmares when we still lived in dream territory.<br/>
<br/>
So that’s nightmare cities. A lot less kids, a little more Halloween.<br/>
<br/>
Oh, and eventually? You start to get the feeling that Pitch loves you, too. He just doesn’t have the tools or nature to show it in a way other people like. A lot of us here know the feeling.<br/>
<br/>
The problems, the dangers, they don’t have anything to do with whether Pitch or Sandy rules the territory. They all have to do with what happens when Pitch and Sandy don’t agree on the boundaries of that territory.<br/>
<br/>
A lot of people call those times battles, people from dream territory and nightmare territory both. And, you know, they look a lot like that. The laws of reality get twisted when the borders between dream and nightmare are changing, and it’s plenty dangerous for humans to get caught in a stampede of Pitch’s black horses or Sandy’s unicorns. And that’s not even counting all the really strange things that happen. Everything…everything changes. Everything changes, and sometimes it changes in ways that you know only Sandy could have thought of, sometimes it changes in ways only Pitch could have thought of. And these changes, they press up against each other, they confront each other, almost intertwining as they shift the fabric of the world—how could that be anything but a battle?<br/>
<br/>
You know. Like the ones some people in dream territory talk about. The battles that Sandy is supposed to wage against Pitch until there’s no more nightmare territory, ever again.<br/>
<br/>
I remember when I was just a kid and looked it up—for as long as people have been keeping records, about half the population has lived in nightmare territory, about half in dream territory. It was weirdly comforting.<br/>
<br/>
Anyway, about these battles, or disagreements, or, well, I’m not sure what I can call them anymore. Because I’ve lived through one, and I think…I think I saw something that warned me what was coming. But what was coming wasn’t a battle.<br/>
<br/>
It was a Friday night, and I was having a beer at the Lavender Rhino, as usual. The normal crowd was there, things were pretty low-key. Steady conversation, steady games of pool, steady stream of rock from the old-fashioned jukebox.<br/>
<br/>
And then. “There’s something you don’t see here every day,” I hear Annie, the bartender, mutter. “Wonder if she’s lost or if she knows exactly what she’s looking for.”<br/>
<br/>
I turn as casually as I can, and see that Annie’s not acting like she’s in a noir for shits and giggles. The person who just walked in is this short, plump, peach of a girl in a bright yellow sundress with a neckline that shows off a whole lot of tanned cleavage. She’s got more makeup on than the rest of the bar combined—not a hard task, but still—and a lot of it’s shimmery. Thick blonde curls fall all the way down to her ass. In short order I think that they look really soft, that I wish I had worn my good suspenders, and that Patty, who even now is sitting in a booth far away from the bar with someone who will probably be able to be our mutual friend again in a month or two, is going to witness me make an ass of myself if the slightest opportunity presents itself.<br/>
<br/>
The stranger looks around and smiles with her bright red lips and I notice vaguely that “Cherry Bomb” is now playing on the jukebox. Hadn’t it been something else ten seconds ago? But it was the middle of the song now.<br/>
<br/>
And then she sort of sways over to the bar on these little white heels—God! She must be tiny when she’s barefoot.<br/>
<br/>
“Can’t ask her to leave,” Annie mutters. “Half of you would follow her to the fucking Violet or wherever. Hope she doesn’t ask for a cosmo.”<br/>
<br/>
“Where’s your sense of sisterhood?” I mutter back.<br/>
<br/>
“Yeah, like you’re really thinking <em>sisterly</em> things right now, either,” Annie says.<br/>
<br/>
I don’t get a chance to reply when someone steps up to the bar next to the stranger and immediately takes the full force of her smile.<br/>
<br/>
The newcomer is another person I haven’t seen here before, but she doesn’t stand out like the blonde girl. She’s within the usual variation here. Black wingtips, black jeans, a long sleeved black button down that has one more button undone on it than would usually be appropriate, but she gets away with it because of a flat chest. She’s skinny as a rail, with short, spiky black hair and cheekbones to kill for.<br/>
<br/>
I think it’s a good thing I didn’t notice her earlier, either, because I’d probably have made an ass of myself already tonight if that had been the case.<br/>
<br/>
They get up on barstools not too far from me and spikes shakes her head at curls. “I suppose I should have expected something like this,” she says in a low voice.<br/>
<br/>
Curls giggles at that, and it’s the kind of laugh to give you heart failure, though it also…I don’t know. I’m hit with this huge blast of nostalgia for the time I saw the ocean, and, well, that’s not normal. Especially because when I glance at Annie, she seems stunned in the same way, but Spikes doesn’t. I get the uneasy feeling that I shouldn’t have heard that laugh, or that I shouldn’t act like I heard it.<br/>
<br/>
“You needn’t have made it so obvious that you don’t belong here,” Spikes says, and I see her reach a hesitant hand toward Curls’.<br/>
<br/>
“You know I couldn’t have avoided it, not here,” Curls says. “Don’t you want me to play the game as well as I can?”<br/>
<br/>
Curls’ voice is low and beautiful, and I try to drink my beer casually. I won’t admit to myself what I think is going on here, but I know one hundred percent that I shouldn’t have heard that voice.<br/>
<br/>
Spikes laughs, soft and wicked. “Oh, yes,” she says, then sighs. “Even at my own expense.”<br/>
<br/>
Curls twines her fingers with Spikes’. “We’ll be evenly matched, as we always have been.”<br/>
<br/>
“Well, in that case,”—the smallest amount of color finally shows up on Spikes’ face—“do you want to stay here for a drink, or just get started right away?”<br/>
<br/>
“Show me what you like about this city, first,” Curls says.<br/>
<br/>
“You always ask that. Fine. But I want to keep these forms even after that. For the duration.”<br/>
<br/>
“Oh, good,” Curls says warmly. “I want to do that, too.”<br/>
<br/>
They leave then, with Curls’ arm casually around Spikes’ waist.<br/>
<br/>
Annie takes a slug of whiskey straight from the bottle as soon as they’re out the door. “Joan,” she says, “if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, don’t say it. But that wasn’t a normal conversation.” She rolls her shoulders. “Almost think I should close and get in the bunker.”<br/>
<br/>
“Almost?” I say.<br/>
<br/>
“Almost,” she agrees. “But everyone probably needs a drink after that, if they felt anything, and the Rhino doesn’t eat grass.”<br/>
<br/>
She does close it finally when the air ripples and half the drinks in the bar turn to blood, and the other half to seawater (fish included).<br/>
<br/>
That was just the start.<br/>
<br/>
When things settled down, we were still in nightmare territory. And I’ve never seen Spikes or Curls again. But maybe that’s just because I don’t know, other than the Lavender Rhino, what places make this city special.<br/>
<br/>
Maybe I’ll start looking for them. I’m not afraid, even if this is nightmare territory. I’ll be awake when I look. And the most frightening people I’ve encountered while awake—well, we were all at the Lavender Rhino together.<br/>
<br/>
And that’s why I live in a nightmare city.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Comments from Tumblr:</p><p>sylphidine said: I am printing this one out. Ye gods, I wish I had the equipment to record myself reading this one out loud. I love it, I love it!</p><p>rosieisla reblogged this from gretchensinister: #this is a really interesting take!!</p><p>marypsue reblogged this from gretchensinister: #there are so MANY things about this#lavender!!#'hope she doesn't order a Cosmo'#marvellous marvellous#I'd read original stuff set in this world</p></blockquote></div></div>
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